MINUTES EAS GENERAL MEETING 2015 held on Thursday, March 26 th 2015; 17.45-18.45 in Rostock, Germany, Hochschule für Musik und Theater Rostock, Kammermusiksaal. Present Board Members: De Vugt Adri, Sammer Gerhard, de Baets Thomas, Malmberg Isolde, Kangron Ene, Rotar-Pance Branka, Loydova Jaroslava, Stakelum Mary, Krämer Oliver // excused: Sarah Hennessy, Nesrin Kalyoncu. Minutes by: Isolde Malmberg *************************************************************************************************************** 1. Welcome and Apologies AV The EAS president Adri de Vugt greets the members. Adri de Vugt brings greetings and apologies from the board members Nesrin Kalyoncu and Sarah Hennessy. 2. Agreement on the Agenda General Meeting 2015 AV Adri de Vugt asks for change of the Agenda: No. 5 to 6 as well as to put 9. to 11. All members agree. 3. Minutes of the General Meeting 2014 IM Isolde Malmberg tells the members to find it on the website inside the member section. 4. President s Report AV The president gives his yearly report (see Attachment 1) 5. Financial Report 2014 and Approval of the Accounts TdB The treasurer Thomas de Baets informs the members about the financial situation and points out that EAS is in a good and quite stable financial situation. Adri de Vugt asks for questions of members, no questions. He informs the members that there have been appointed two auditors and they have checked the financial report 2014: Herbert Meyer (BE) and Sabina Vidulin (HR). The two auditors sign the financial report. (Financial Report 2014 see Attachment 2) page 1 of 6
6. Budget Plan 2015 TdB Thomas de Baets presents the budget plan for 2015, see Attachment 3 7. Regulations IM Isolde Malmberg is asking for a minor change of the regulations, the following scored out parts in will be removed. See also http://www.eas-music.org/about-eas/regulations/ 4 The Board 1. The board consists of a) the president, the vice president and the past president; b) the secretary and deputy; c) the treasurer and deputy; d) at least one further board member. Reasons: The roles of deputy secretary and deputy treasurer do not refer to the reality in the board, there are other demanding tasks like: Newsletter Coordinator, NC-coordinator, webmaster etc. We do not need these deputies before the Belgian law. We would like to show on the Web what board members do in real, and not fake-titles because our regulations ask us to do so. The General Meeting agrees. The regulations will be changed on the website accordingly by IM. 8. Reports - National Coordinators EK, GS There are 26 NCs at the moment GS and EK thank the NCs, there was a very interesting and cooperative symposium held in Rostock, 4 new NCs are announced and applauded by the members: Jeroen Vanesser (Belgium); Naomi Maczelka (Hungary); Lorrainne O Connell (Ireland), Kastriot Sada - Kosovo (Kosovo) EK points out that there are now 26 windows to Europe: Let us keep them open and clear. - Student Forum BR BR is thanking the NCs for bringing students to the SF and reports about a very successful SF 2015. BR invites the delegates to the SF Workshop on the next day, this is a new format. The board thanks Marina Gall for her contribution in co-coordinating the SF. - Doctoral Student Forum MS MS points out that the DSF shows high qualities of questions and sharing research ideas internationally, good forum to meet. Some of the SF persons are now already inside the DSF, this is a sign of a growing generation in EAS. This year for the first time a Science Slam has taken place, this will be developed further. page 2 of 6
- New format for working groups in EAS: Special Focus Groups (SFGs) IM Isolde Malmberg informs about the current status of SFGs interest groups of EAS members. Currently there are two SFGs active: PRiME (coordinated by IM and TB) DiTiME (Coordinated by Marina Gall and Manfred Scheid) other groups are thinking about formation. There is more information on the website available. - Co-operations with other networks AV EAS has strengthened the cooperation with ISME in particular regarding future EAS/ISME Regional Conferences. The cooperation with EMU and AEC is further strenghtened by the involvement in a project on Quality Assurance. EAS is member of the Full Score Evaluation Working Group (AEC). - Newsletters, Newsflashes MS Newsletter is very short, just a flavour of what is happening. MS is editing. 9. New Ideas AV Adri de Vugt offers to the present members to address new ideas. No new ideas are mentioned. There is always the possibility to send ideas to the board. 10. Honorary Membership AV Sarah Hennessy is awarded the HM. SH has been President 2011-2013 and has set important contributions inside the menet project. AV reads a letter of SH who is leaving the board in which she is thanking EAS for great experiences. Marina Gall will hand over the certificate to SH personally. 11. Board Elections IM Isolde Malmberg informs about the procedure: The secretary (IM) and the future Past President (AV) have sent out an open call for the nomination of new board members. They have checked whether the formal criteria have been met. - Two nominators (EAS members) for each nominee - Two years membership of nominee The list of nominees for the EAS board 2015-2017 has been sent out to all members two months before the election. A session today during the lunch break Meet the Candidates has been held to get to know them better. IM reminds the audience: You are voting for a group of persons forming the board. These persons will afterwards appoint their chair/vice-chair (id est president/vice president). The results will be announced on Friday evening (conference dinner). Because there are as many places in the board as nominees IM proposes to the General Meeting to elect the whole list at once. IM asks for agreement to this procedure. 1 Abstention 0 Against Rest FOR page 3 of 6
IM proposes to vote for the following list of candidates: Thomas de Baets BE Natassa Economidou-Stavrou CY Anna Houmann SE Marina Gall UK Gerhard Sammer DE Mary Stakelum UK All present members vote FOR the list. The new EAS board members stand up and are applauded by the General Meeting. 12. AOB No other business 13. Discharging of the board AV Adri de Vugt is thanking the leaving board members - Ene Kangron, - Branka Rotar-Pance, - Jaroslava Lojdova, - Oliver Krämer, - Nesrin Kalyoncu & - Isolde Malmberg. - Presents are given to the leaving board members. GS and TdB thank Adri de Vugt as parting president, he will stay on as past president. The General Meeting is closed at 18.45. Attachment 1: President s Report 2014 Attachment 2: Financial Report 2014 Attachment 3: Financial Plan 2015 page 4 of 6
Attachment 1: President s Report Dear members of EAS, The year 2014 has been a year full of activities. In this report I will represent the main activities in general, my colleagues of the EAS board will explain some issues more extensively. The economic crisis in Europe is still tangible in music education. It is clear that in many countries the effects of dramatic political decisions are becoming manifest and we still don t know how this will develop. From our members and National coordinators we get reports about the consequences of the cuts in cultural and educational programs. EAS supports - as far as she is able to colleagues an their initiatives to raise awareness of the situation amongst decision makers. We are happy that other European networks like the European Music School Union, the Association for European Conservatoires, and many others join their forces. For us the advocacy strategies of the European Music Council are very supportive. The last conference in Cyprus has been a big success. More than 225 delegates participated in seminars, discussions and workshops about the theme Every Learner counts, democracy and inclusioin in Music Education in the 21 st century. The Student Forum, prior to the conference, took place for the 12 th time. EAS is aware that youth and students are very important in our network and is developing strategies for it. Also the Doctoral Students Forum has been succesfull and important for EAS. This forum as an excellent platform to exchange the work of researchers and supports the importance of research for the improvement of music education. The conferences are developing in a very positive way, and it must be underlined that this not a matter of course. EAS has no funding. All work is done by volunteers, whether or not supported by the institutes where e.g. board members, national coordinators, student fora coordinators, webmasters, treasures and all others that contribute to EAS, work. When we organize a conference, we depend to great extent on the willingness and responsibility of the hosting institute. EAS has the policy to make the conference - as far as possible - accessible for all their members. This means that the conference fee is relatively low. This is the same for our membership fee. Because of these low incomes, the conference fee is never enough to cover all the costs. Local funding and support of the organizing institutes is always necessary. The interest for EAS and its conference is growing. Like the last years there were more submissions of papers than the conference could program. This increase of submissions is a very positive development and stimulates the quality of our conferences. All papers are peer reviewed and several criteria are taken into account corresponding to the different kind of activities. There are criteria for research, workshops and reports. At the same time we are aware that there is no clear standard for all these contributions. The EAS conference should address a broad audience varying from practitioners to researchers and it should represent a scope of whole Europe. So, it is the idea of having a platform for all with quality criteria. page 5 of 6
Quality and content has always been an important issue for EAS. The bookseries European Perspectives on Music Education is an example of that and we are proud to publish our fourth issue this year. The yearly books will consist of selected papers presented at the conferences which are special rewritten for the book and some additional chapters. New in 2014 is the formation of so-called special focus groups. Not only during conferences but also during the year, expertise around specific themes is been exchanged and enhanced. This way of working is also illustrative for the EAS as a network for knowledge development. The national coordinators play an important role in strengthening our network. We are also happy that there are more countries now represented by an NC. Last year they have been working very hard on updating the country sections of our website and we had a successful NC meeting prior to this conference. In 2014 the EAS board has been hard working on the application of European funding from the Creative Europe subprogram European Networks. For this network project application, EAS has decided not just to maintain its current status-quo by applying for support to its existing regular activities, but rather to take a more developmental approach by drawing in expertise from external partners, which include various music educational institutes and several cultural organisations across Europe with a focus on audience development and the cooperation between musicians and their institutes and organisations and music educators. Unfortunately, we have not been successful. Just a shortage of 6 points out of hundred kept us away from funding. As the plan has a big potential, we are now looking for new possibilities to get funding. At the same time EAS very happy that we are partner in a AEC project that has been accepted by the EU. This project has just started. EAS, EMU and AEC are having a working group focusing on an evaluation framework for all levels of music education. Our cooperation with other networks and organization has been intensified in the last year. Our cooperation with ISME has been continued and the biennial EAS/ISME regional conference is an example of this. A very important step in our cooperation with other networks is the agreement with the European Music Union (EMU) and Association Europenne des Conservatoires (AEC). Last year there has been made further steps in this cooperation. One is the start with the working group on evaluation. The other is the start of a series of meetings to see how these three organisations can work together on other issues. I would like to finalize with that EAS has developed very positively in 2014. And that is exactly what we need. In the current economic situation a powerful network and energetic community of music educators is a necessity. Thank you. Adri de Vugt page 6 of 6